Our Impact in April

It was a mixed bag for our guests at Union Mission in April. While we're happy to see some of the numbers that went up so drastically last month come back to earth just a little bit, there are still some warning signs about the deepening recession and its impact on those most vulnerable in our community.

Over at Union Mission Crossroads, we are continuing to see steep increases in the number of men housed. In March, we saw 375 men. In April, we were up to 416. By contrast, you may recall we saw 120 men in February. I was over there on Tuesday, and chaplain Jake Moyer told me they are currently filling about 45-50 beds. He said that number typically rises as we move deeper into the month. The bottom line, then, is that we are seeing more and more men facing homelessness now than in previous months. But as we always say, there is opportunity amid crisis. Case in point? The dedicated chaplains over at Crossroads--Moyer, Calvin Ford, Clyde Burns, Wade Wiseman and Crossroads Director David Sneade--provided individual counseling for 310 men in April. In March, we counseled 92. So, we're thankful for those seeking wisdom and guidance while visiting Crossroads.

We stayed pretty steady in April at Brookside Family Life Center. We had 42 total guests--same as last month--with 13 of the women being new to our program.

The first number I always look for in Union Mission Family Services' monthly report is the number of first-time visits. Some of our guests are steady, but the first-timers are what we have to keep an eye on. It's a barometer of what's going on out there. That being said, the 63 first-time visits in April is back down to our first-time-visit average. That's after a spike from 64 in February to 84 in March.

(To see some of the numbers, head over to wefeedpeople.com, and click on the 'what we do' page.)

All told, we fed 47,042 people in April (both physically and spiritually.)